​#DidGCHQSpyOnYou? Privacy rights group to ask on your behalf

Privacy International has launched a website offering to help people discover whether British spy agency GCHQ illegally obtained their data from their US counterpart the NSA.

Participants submit
their name and email address to Privacy International. Their details will then be
sent to GCHQ and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) as part
of a large-scale inquiry.

The campaign follows a ruling by the IPT earlier this month that
judged intelligence sharing between the US and UK prior to
December 2014 was unlawful because the public were unaware they
were being spied on.

A Privacy International spokesman told RT the campaign had
already struck a chord, with over 6,000 people signing up in the
first 24 hours.

More than 1,000 Twitter messages have used the #DidGCHQSpyOnYou
hashtag as of Tuesday afternoon according to social media
analysis service Hashtracking, including influential American
hacker Jacob Appelbaum.

Privacy International said the campaign is not limited to British
citizens, but open to anyone in the world.

“Given the mass surveillance capabilities of the NSA and
GCHQ, and that the agencies ‘share by default’ the information
they collect, an unlimited number of people could have been
affected by the unlawful spying,” Privacy International said
in a press statement.

If participants discover they are the victim of illegal spying,
they can request their records are deleted. This could apply to
emails, phone records and internet communications.

Ironically, however, participants will need to pass their
information to GCHQ. Privacy International concedes this
“sounds absurd,” but explain the IPT “needs people
to come forward to file complaints.”

The group suggests email addresses alone are not enough to
retrieve the information, as the databases are likely to be
unindexed or organized by IP address, hardware address or under
some other technical identification.

Privacy International says it is only asking for email addresses
at the moment in order to involve as many people as possible. If
participants want to provide more information, they suggest
submitting an individual complaint to the IPT.

Illustrator James Walmesley, who took part in the campaign,
admitted he was mostly motivated by vanity.

Speaking to RT, he said: “As a massive narcissist and
committed goody two-shoes, I am keen to know if the security
services have wasted their time in analyzing my banal private
messages. I mean, they could just follow me on Twitter if they
want that guff!”

Walmesley said he believes Privacy International framed the
campaign in a way which “appeals to the average person’s
vanity.”

“Other than that, I would be interested to know how the
security services use the harvested information,” he added.

“Are they simply looking for messages that specifically
threaten national security, or are they profiling people, and
therefore possibly drawing false positives that could threaten
someone's civil liberties, simply because they hold innocuous yet
similar views to terrorists/activists?”

Speaking to RT, spokesman for Privacy International Mike Rispoli
said: “Over 6,000 people and counting have signed up in less
than 24 hours to find out whether GCHQ illegally spied on them.
This impressive demonstration of people power shows how
intelligence agencies can be held to account for their unlawful
activities.

“The public have a right to know whether they have been
caught up in GCHQ and NSA's illegal intelligence sharing. We want
to help the public assert that right, and we need thousands more
to join.”